Jay Silveira
New member
After a great day of skiing on Saturday with Tyler and E, I hadn’t planned to head out Sunday. However, when I checked the Saddle Mountain SNOTEL site in the morning, it reported that 8 new inches had already fallen with a temperature of 24.6 degrees. This meant that a nice new coating of light powder would be present on top of the settled base, basically great conditions to get out and ski. As a bonus, we’d actually accumulated an inch of snow in town, so skiing felt like the right thing to do. <BR> <BR>It was an excellent ride up to the pass, with great views due to the clouds breaking up and new snow even down to the valley. The road into the Lost Trail parking lot had not been plowed, but it was around 1:00 P.M., and a number of other vehicles had already packed it down pretty well. There were a lot of folks with snowmobiles, both for fun and for towing skiers, but fortunately they seemed to be generally off in the distance so there wasn’t a lot of annoying engine noise. The sun had come out now, which meant it would be a bonus blue sky powder day. <BR> <BR>I decided to hit something different than yesterday, and catch a bit more vertical, so I skinned up along the Meadow Trail to Meadow Run and the chair 2 area. A number of people had already been up, so I had a perfect track for skinning. A guy in front of me was hiking in boots, but the skin track was so well packed that his footprints didn’t ruin it. Checking the snow off to the sides revealed about 8-12 inches of new powder, probably in the range of 6-8% H2O. I stopped my hike at around 7,600’, a couple hundred feet shy of the summit. The terrain above me was very gentle, and not really worth the hike since I’d probably just have to straight line it anyway. I was pretty much alone on this side of the mountain, although a ski patroller did come by towing a person with a snowmobile, and another guy on skins also appeared. I switched to ski mode, turned on the head cam, and I was off down the slope. <BR> <BR>The first hundred vertical or so was still quite mellow, so I pretty much ran it straight, and got some good shots of the powder cascading over my skis with the head cam. I then came to Southern Comfort, my trail of choice for the day. It has a good black pitch, and very little flat area. Once I rolled over the pitch, I got some real turns… fantastic turns… heli-skiing type turns. The guy I had seen skinning had also chosen Southern Comfort (wise choice) and I could see him and his dog off to the side watching as I made my turns. All in all, I got about 1,000’ of really nice powder that was definitely worth the hike. I tried hard to see if I could get some face shots, but this just wasn’t deep enough snow on the CMH fats for that kind of thing. <BR> <BR>At the bottom of the run (elevation 6,600’) I stopped and chatted with the other guy I’d seen skiing. We had a good talk about the backcountry options in the region, and I learned about three cool backcountry bowls that are right across the highway. It turns out that they are very easy access, but they are south facing so it’s best to get there before the sun does. It should be a fun place to explore this winter though, I’ll have to find the time to check it out. After our chat, we both headed back towards the base area, and I got lucky that I didn’t have to break trail. We split up when he went for another run and I had to head back to the base area. It was certainly a great day to be out, but it’s too bad E had work to do. If she’d know it would be a blue sky day with such good snow, I bet I could have talked her into it. <BR> <BR>I got a few pictures from the day, but since I was alone, they are just a few scenery shots. Still, they give a good idea of what the conditions were like. They can be viewed at the following address: <BR> <BR><A HREF="http://www.JandEproductions.com/2003/07DEC03.html" TARGET="_top">http://www.JandEproductions.com/2003/07DEC03.html</A> <BR> <BR>J.Spin
"> <BR> <BR>(12 days in a row without skiing... really tough, this time of the year) <BR> <BR>Excellent pics with perfect snow and perfect sky